Don't be a hero
by TrickstersImp
Summary: I begged him not to be a hero. I begged him to come back to me. I sent him letters, and I prayed to God to deliver him home. But still, Andre never came back to me. The war consumed him, and it consumed his life. *Winner of Best Tandre at The Topaz Awards 2012*


May 2nd 2019

Dear André,

I can't do this.

I just can't.

It's been four years since you left me. It's been a year since you walked out that door and never came back. When you left I was a struggling pop star, and I had just turned twenty. Now I'm twenty four and I'm a one hit wonder. I could have kept it up, but there's just no point.

There's no point in anything at all anymore. I don't care about anything anymore. I'm going to join you where you are. Next time, it won't be a letter that I have to write to you, we'll speak face to face next to Jesus.

I'm sure Jesus will take care of Kiara, too.

You just had to be a hero, didn't you?

I dreamed about you last night. There was a gun thrust right in your face and you laughed in the face of danger. You told it that it could do nothing to you because you were right, and you were strong in your convictions. You told it the worst that it could do to you would be to send you to your father, that you would go to Heaven and be happy there. You warned him if he hurt you, he would be going to hell once he passed.

He shot you for your troubles.

Are you happy now, then? I guess I'll find out soon enough, and then we'll be one big happy family again. We might have to wait a while to see Kiara again, but at least we will both be with each other like we haven't been since you left.

* * *

><p>17th August 2015<p>

Dear André,

I'm pregnant.

I'm pregnant and I don't know what to do. Where are you? Where are you when I need you? Why haven't I heard from you? This is ridiculous. The letters must be getting lost. There's no way you could be sitting here and not replying. So why did I get a reply to your first one? I know they're going to the right place. A guy started flirting with me the other day. I should have had my husband with me, so things like that don't happen. Things like that shouldn't happen, because I'm Mrs. Harris.

But you're not here. I need our baby to have a father. I want you to help name the child, you can't do that if you aren't here. I'm scared. It's going to be hard on my own. It's going to be too hard for me to manage all of rhis.

Why won't you come home to me? I feel like I betrayed you in some way to make you do this, but I promise you that I didn't. I would never do anything like that, ever in a million years. But if I did, I'll apologise to you a thousand times, if you just come home.

I don't care what I have to do.

Just André, come home to see the birth of your child. I'm not asking for much.

* * *

><p>28th August 2018<p>

Dear André,

Kiara's second birthday has been and gone.

Your MIA letter came this morning. It is incredibly late, if you've been gone all of this time. I should never have let you go. I should never have risked it. Now you're gone forever. I can't bear that, I just can't. I'm losing it, I'm going mad. I can't live anymore, André.

They think I'm clinically depressed and I'm scared about Kiara. She's the last thing that I have left of you, so I have to be strong for her. I have to be there for her, just like you weren't there for me. Because I've realised… that if I'm not there for her, nobody else ever will be. Because you sure as hell aren't. I have to wonder if it was because you misjudged a situation, or you thought you could pull it off that you aren't here, sitting around the dinner table right now. If you screwed up, and now my little girl doesn't have a daddy.

Maybe I am clinically depressed.

Maybe I'm just plain nuts.

But the only person to blame is yourself.

Today, I thought about the day we first met. I thought about those happy days back in Hollywood Arts before everything got extremely complicated. It makes me laugh how complicated we thought it all was before. It was so simple and yet we thought it was like a complex math equation. All it boiled down to was, I Loved You, You Loved Me and we had each other. We don't anymore. I have nobody.

* * *

><p>February 29th 2016<p>

Dear André,

On 21 February, our daughter was born. I haven't heard a word from you since then. I have one question for you.

Why?

Why did you leave me? Why did you leave the life you had built for yourself? You should have been there. Her name is Kiara Andréa Harris, and she may never know her father. I can only assume that I have done something wrong, but you have to write me back eventually. Don't be a coward, André, if there is something wrong, tell me. Don't hide anymore. If you keep hiding behind this war, then you are not the man that I married. If you don't love me, then tell me.

I miss you. Please, I need to read your words, it could just say 'hi' for all I care. I just need something. I just need anything.

I just need proof here in writing that you still love me, and care about me. That you haven't found some prettier girl and forgotten all about your wife back in California. I mean, it would be easy enough, it's not hard to find someone better than me, Go ahead, André, this is the part when you tell me that I'm wrong, that I'm beautiful. But there's just this nagging silence on the other end of the line.

* * *

><p>16th July 2015<p>

Dear André,

Where are you? I haven't heard a word from you since you left. That was two months ago. It's getting almost unbearable. I love you so much. I need you back besides me. Hurry back for me, André. I went to a wedding recently, you know the one I mean. It was about time that Cat and Robbie got married. You should have been the best man there, just as I was the maid of honour. But I hope you're doing well, and that you still think of me, just as often as I think of you. I'm sure you do, if you're anything like what you used to be. And I'm sure you are, it's only been a couple months, nothing drastic could have happened. I'm sure you'll pick up this letter, laugh, and reply.

Cat and Robbie look so sweet together these days. It almost makes me want to barf rainbows. But it also makes me happy. Everybody deserves their chance to be young and in love, even if it drives their best friends completely stark raving mad. Cat's even saying that maybe one day soon there will be enough little one to drive us all mad.

A little Cat, can you imagine that? How would we all possibly cope.

I long to hear your voice, just to say that everything's alright. I know that it must be, and that chances are I'm being ridiculous. But I'm ridiculous a lot. My cousin's back in town as well, so some pretty weird things happened. You've met Megan, right? Well, yeah, she's a lot like, my other sibling… which is, very strange.

But I think that you have to write back soon, because you're you and you've never let me down.

I am eagerly awaiting your next reply.

* * *

><p>21st February 2017<p>

Dear André,

Kiara turned one today.

She's a beautiful girl, you know that? Thankfully, she looks nothing like me at all but every time I look at her I can only see you in her eyes. I can see her spirit from you and the music that she's always humming can have had no other output.

I told her that her father is dead. That was a lie, wasn't it? Her father isn't dead, is he? You can't be dead, André, because if you were dead, I would feel it. I would feel it somewhere inside of my heart. If you were dead, then I would die too.

I would die too.

But you aren't dead, are you? So that is all irrelevant. You could never be dead, you're André Harris, and you're so very full of life. It would be ridiculous to imagine your corpse lying there, rotting in a trench with bugs crawling all the way through it. The very image makes me squirm with disbelief.

You didn't be the hero, did you? You played it safe; you tried to get back to me. And you _never_ gave up, did you? Please just tell me that you never gave up and gave in to the death and destruction around you.

I hate this war. I hate this stupid, bitter, horrible war. I know that for the last year and a bit that the war has been your life, and even when the army wasn't in your wildest dreams that you were still the child of an ex-soldier.

I hate this war, but I love you. I want you to come home.

* * *

><p>27th May 2015<p>

Dear André,

I'm just beginning to miss you now. But don't worry. I understand completely that this was what you had to do. This was your calling, and what your Dad would have wanted. It may be so very far from what we expected back at Hollywood Arts. That seems like a lifetime ago now. But I hope you're home soon. I just have one thing to ask you now.

André, don't be a hero. Hurry home, I'm happy for you. But make sure that you come home to me, because you may work in the army but your life doesn't belong to them. You belong to me, just as I belong to you. Please write me back, I'm just getting used to this, it's not something I do a lot.

My new single's just come out. I did it in the memory of my brave husband, heading off to war. I'm achieving my dreams so make sure that you accomplish yours. I hope to see you soon.

* * *

><p>A twenty-four year old André walked along his old road on May 3rd 2019. He had a spring in his step and André was happy. He was finally going to be able to see his wife again after a year of service. He had gotten one letter from her, and he had immediately written back, and it seemed like all was well.<p>

He couldn't believe it had only been a year anyway. He had been in active service for four months. It was that stupid blow the head that had made all that time pass. He had lost a couple days of his life in a coma. The man next to him had been asleep for _four years. _He couldn't believe that you could possibly be asleep for four years. He was really glad that it hadn't been him in that situation. He was completely oblivious to the fact that the man who was supposed to have been asleep for four year's name was listed as André Harris. He didn't realise that it was him, not his unfortunate neighbour, that had been asleep all that time.

He opened the door to his apartment, and was surprised at how run down the entire place was. The old blue door was now a faded red and there was rust everywhere. It didn't seem possible for the door to have been painted a different colour and then faded in only a year. But it had, so he supposed he had to be content.

He ran up the stairs to the bedroom, anxious to see the look of surprise on his wife's face.

He never got to see it.

As he opened the bedroom door, a shock blast through him. It was the most horrible site sight he had ever seen, his wife's body twisted at unnatural angles, and the neck snapped, with blood pouring out of it. The whole body was filthy and stank. A part of him realised that she had picked up their safe, and dropped it, right on her head.

There was a child in a bright blue crib, crying.

His wife's eyes fluttered open for a second. "André." she whispered, "But you…" Her arms stretched out to point at a pile of letters on the dresser. With tears in her eyes, the last of her life force slowly disappeared.

André walked over to the letters, and looked at them, all marked André. They were copies of all the letters she'd ever sent to him, and even the ones she didn't, because she thought he was in a place that her letters could never reach.

Slowly he sat down and started to read.

* * *

><p><em><strong>"Billy, don't be a hero, don't be a fool with your life"<strong>_

_**"Billy, don't be a hero, come back and make me your wife"**_

_**And as he started to go she said "Billy, keep your head lo-o-ow"**_

_**"Billy, don't be a hero, come back to me"**_

* * *

><p><em><strong>Okay, not quite sure who was the wife there. You can read it as either <em><strong>Tandré <strong>_or Jandré, although I did initially write it as _**Tandré**_, in fact, it started out Candré, but that failed. It's the first songfic I've done for a bit, so I hope you liked it.**_

_**The Name Is A Lie, As Is The Cake**_

_**I-Am-Not-A-Smiley-Person**_


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